THE Queen's Baton, carried by baton bearer Benton McCann, passes through Wollongong, in early February. Catching a train from the Sunshine Coast to the Gold Coast for the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games would get you there but wouldn't get you home according to research done by commuter advocate Jeff Addison.Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert

Catch a train from Coast to the Games? Forget it

Bill HoffmanWhether taking on developers hell-bent on destroying the Coast’s natural appeal or a Prime Minister indifferent to the plight of the poor, Bill Hoffman has never been one to mince his words. Bill’s been a journalist for 32 years, 29 of those on the Coast. Love him or hate him, he'll get you blogging.

IF YOUR intent was to catch a train from the Sunshine Coast to the Commonwealth Games, it would make sense to forget it.

Rail commuter advocate Jeff Addison has used Queensland Rail's Games' Journey Planner to analyse connections from six major south-east Queensland rail lines to the 261 sessions around the Gold Coast.

What he's found, Mr Addison said, was "a ticket to drive you onto the Bruce Highway".

The average return travel time from Nambour to a Games' event and back was seven hours, 25 minutes and 42 seconds and eight hours 40 minutes and 30 seconds from Maroochydore.

Those are actual travel times excluding the time you spend watching an event.

The poor Games public transport service from the Sunshine Coast, Mr Addison said, comes on top of a 35% cut to services to services since February, 2015.

Initially services to the region were cut from 359 per week to 320. The December summer holiday timetable saw those drop another 27 per cent to 235.

"There's been a massacre of trains to this region," Mr Addison said.

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Mr Addison said if you wanted to leave from Maroochydore using public transport to attend two sessions of Beach Volleyball on April 11 for the 4pm session at Coolangatta Beach or the April 12 session timed for 3.30pm it would, according to QR's own Journey Planner, take 11 hours and 11 minutes in travel time.

From Nambour attending the volley ball on those dates would be slightly quicker at 10 hours 09 minutes.

Mr Addison calculated the average return journey from Nambour at seven hours, 25 minutes and 42 seconds and from Maroochydore at eight hours, 40 minutes and 30 seconds.

He found the shortest return journey for Nambour to be five hours, 55 minutes to the Anna Meares Velodrome for Cycling on April 6 for the 1pm session.

From Maroochydore, the shortest return journey was six hours 43 minutes for the same event.

Travelling by public transport from Nambour to Games' events with only 141 sessions (54%) accessible

was at least a better option than travelling from Maroochydore from where only 68 events (26.05%) could be accessed.

A government spokesperson said the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games will be the largest sporting event in Australia in the past decade.

"We have always said there would be impacts across the broader SEQ network with an additional six million trips on our transport network during games time," the spokesperson said.

"Heavy rail services will be tripled on the Gold Coast line, and will be running 24/7 during the games along with light rail and event shuttle buses.

"The GC2018 Journey Planner helps spectators plan ahead to get to their events on time."

The spokesperson said that given how far the Sunshine Coast was from Gold Coast Games venues he encouraged Games attendee to plan their travel well ahead and make an informed decision about what works best for them in terms of getting to and from events.

"In some cases, particularly when travelling a long distance across multiple cities for an early morning or late night event, some spectators may choose to stay down at the Gold Coast, or utilise one of the 10,000 additional park and ride spots specifically for games spectators," he said.

"These can be booked for free through the GC2018 Journey Planner. These have been provided in addition to existing commuter park and rides to keep everyone moving during the games."